Social media is the ideal target for criminals

Organizations have been warned that social media is becoming a dominant platform for cyber crime, which is particularly worrying as many firms are now using it to integrate with eCommerce technology.

Kaspersky Lab recently highlighted the growth of phishing scams via Facebook and warned that it predicts new social network Google+ to be a prominent new target for spam.

Rik Ferguson, director of security, research and communications EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) at Trend Micro, echoed the opinion that the new social networking site may be an ideal vessel for online criminals.

"Anything where there's unlimited availability and huge public interest is something that will encourage spam," he explained.

However, many companies looking into eCommerce technology are also starting to embrace social media as a marketing strategy.

Mr Ferguson warned that this rising popularity will only make sites such as Google+ more of a target.

"Criminals follow the behavior of consumers and if consumers are moving, as they are, to those alternate platforms, that's where the criminals will go," he said.